Take the name of Jesus with you

Take the name of Jesus with you. Lydia Odell Baxter* (1809-1874). Written ca. 1870, this hymn was published in Pure Gold for the Sunday School (1871), compiled by Robert Lowry* and William Howard Doane*. It was included in Ira D. Sankey*’s Sacred Songs and Solos, and it remained in use in 20th-century books. It is sometimes known as ‘Precious name’, from the refrain: ‘Precious name, O how sweet!/ Hope of earth and joy of heaven’. In view of the journey metaphor implied in ‘Take…with you’, it is not surprising to find this hymn in The Pilgrim Hymnal (Boston and Chicago, 1930). The central theme of the text is that all believers are assured that by naming Jesus in the everyday world they are...